Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, back before...

The Newberry, which gave me an opportunity to have more resources to be more strategic and do more things.

I would have, at the beginning of each year, my wife, Steph...

My ex-wife, Steph, who's my dear friend, she would, at the beginning of the year, she'd say, Kwame, she'd bring out a whiteboard, write down all the plans, all the things, all the businesses, all the ideas, because I'm a bloomer, a re-bloomer, a post-bloomer, a pre-bloomer.

And I got this

Uh-huh

... showrun...

I'd never run a show.

And my position was, you know, "I've written the book, I believe I can do it.

Pair me up with another showrunner, and I'll be the co-showrunner." So they bought that, and we co-showran the show, and it was, it was a great experience.

It was five years from Disney optioning it to it actually debuting on Disney+.

Man, that was one of the most intensive, 14-hour days, 100-degree weather in New Orleans, two summers, and it was the most rewarding experience.

Mm-hmm.

Like, have you always seen yourself as a Say Yes person or did you develop yourself into a Say Yes person? So just what's your relation to Say Yes in general?

When I was three years old, my parents were in graduate school at Columbia University.

We lived in a place called Morningside Heights.

And my father The quality time that we spent together was on the playground.

And he would take me to shoot baskets, to shoot free throws.

My father was a pretty big basketball star in high school, college, and the Air Force.

So he would take me to shoot free throws.

And so how do you make sure you're finding a balance and saying no to some things so you can keep saying yes to the things you care about?

What did you see in that? How did it help you understand what you needed to write right now?

Well, I think in the sense that Baldwin was crying out.

It was a plea for our humanity, for the humanity of Black people in particular, of oppressed peoples in general, to be recognized.

I don't know if I'm writing a plea more so than I'm sort of making a demandAnd that I'm saying we've got to reclaim our own humanity and cannot allow ourselves to be defined by other people.

The wound, the wound has been here.

The wound has been here since, since Africans first arrived on these shores.

These episodes of police killings and brutality, you know, they've existed for 400 years.

But if you could just read the closing poem for us.